, about the possibility of Quiller-Couch writing for
The Daily Herald In 1887, while he was attending Oxford, he published ''Dead Man's Rock'', a romance in the style of
Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and later
The Astonishing History of Troy Town (1888), a comic novel set in a fictionalised version of his home town of Fowey, and
The Splendid Spur (1889). Quiller-Couch was well known for his story "The Rollcall of the Reef", based on the wreck of
HMS Primrose during 1809 on the Cornish coast. He published during 1896 a series of critical articles,
Adventures in Criticism, and in 1898 he published a completion of
Robert Louis Stevenson's unfinished novel,
St. Ives. From his Oxford time he was known as a writer of excellent verse. With the exception of the parodies entitled
Green Bays (1893), his poetical work is contained in
Poems and Ballads (1896). In 1895 he published an
anthology from the 16th- and 17th-century English lyricists,
The Golden Pomp, followed in 1900 by the
Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900. Later editions of this extended the period of concern to 1918 and it remained the leading general anthology of English verse until
Helen Gardner's New Oxford Book of English Verse appeared in 1972. In 1910 he published
The Sleeping Beauty and other Fairy Tales from the Old French. He was the author of a number of popular novels with Cornish settings (collected edition as 'Tales and Romances', 30 vols. 1928–29). He was appointed
King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the
University of Cambridge in 1912, and retained the chair for the rest of his life. Simultaneously he was elected to a Fellowship of
Jesus College, which he also held until his death. His inaugural lectures as the professor of English literature were published as the book
On the Art of Writing. His rooms were on staircase C, First Court, and known as the 'Q-bicle'. He supervised the beginnings of the English Faculty there — an academic diplomat in a fractious community. He is sometimes regarded as the epitome of the school of English literary criticism later modified by his pupil
F. R. Leavis.
Alistair Cooke was a notable student of Quiller-Couch and
Nick Clarke's semi-official biography of Cooke features Quiller-Couch prominently, noting that he was regarded by the Cambridge establishment as "rather eccentric" even by the university's standards. Quiller-Couch was a noted literary critic, publishing editions of some of Shakespeare's plays (in the
New Shakespeare, published by
Cambridge University Press, with
Dover Wilson) and several critical works, including
Studies in Literature (1918) and
On the Art of Reading (1920). He edited a companion to his verse anthology:
The Oxford Book of English Prose, which was published in 1923. He left his
autobiography,
Memories and Opinions, unfinished; it was nevertheless published in 1945. ==Legacy==